Edmund Burke: “Is it a thing, or is it a name, or is it a fraud?”

It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

This is the result of all the delusions held out to engage a miserable people in rebellion, murder, and sacrilege, and to make them prompt and zealous instruments in the ruin of their country!

Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.

The prattling about the rights of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit or a pound of gunpowder.